Teacher helped run businesses with spouse
6/12/2010WAUSEON - Lillian C. Jacobs, a teacher in Fremont, Toledo, and Wauseon who helped in her husband's businesses, died yesterday in Heartland of Wauseon, six days before her 99th birthday.
The cause was not known. She had dementia in recent years, her daughter Sue said.
Mrs. Jacobs retired in the late 1960s after more than a decade teaching in the Wauseon school district. She especially enjoyed teaching first grade at Burr Road School. She often said she could write a book about the stories her students told, whether from their home lives or their imagination.
"She had a way with them, and they loved her," her daughter said. "She had lots of patience."
As a new teacher in the early 1930s, she taught at Fremont Ross High School, her alma mater. She later was a substitute teacher in the Toledo Public Schools.
She took part in several business ventures helmed by her husband, James. When the family lived near Norwalk, Ohio, he and a brother-in-law had a mink ranch. She and her sister scraped and dried the pelts.
The family moved to Wauseon in 1949, and she was secretary of his service station. In the early 1960s, the couple developed land adjoining the station into Jacobs Subdivision. She kept books for the project.
"They worked well together. Everything just seemed to work like a puzzle," their daughter said. "They were great parents."
She was a former president of the Wauseon Business and Professional Women's Club. She was "woman of the year" for 1976.
She was born June 17, 1911, in Utica, Ohio, to Lily and Joseph Turner and grew up in Fremont. She knew from age 4 that she wanted to teach, and she was a graduate of what is now Bowling Green State University.
She volunteered at Fulton County Health Center and Sauder Village. She taught Sunday school at First Christian Church and traveled to Israel with a church group.
She and her husband, James D. Jacobs, married in 1936. He died in 1979.
Surviving are her daughters, Sue C. Jacobs and Neva Warncke; son, James R. Jacobs; eight grandchildren, and 20 great-grandchildren.
Services will be at 11 a.m. Monday in First Christian Church, Wauseon, where visitation will be from 2 to 4 p.m. tomorrow. Arrangements are by the Edgar-Grisier Funeral Home, Wauseon.
The family suggests tributes to the church.